"There have already been stories about this auction in Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Chinese and Japanese!"

FORBES: Cyber Treasures For Sale

Roosevelt's Census Proclamation, urging Americans to participate, was translated into 23 languages, including Slovak, Greek, Lithuanian, Russian, Dutch, Hebrew, Serbo-Croatian, French, Italian, Spanish, German.

CNN: Why the huge interest in the 1940 Census?

At 81, the amiable Mr. Strachwitz, whose family relocated to the U.S. West Coast in 1947, recalls falling first for early jazz when seeing the Louis Armstrong-Billie Holliday film "New Orleans" as a teenager, then hearing everything from hardcore hillbilly to "Harlem Matinee" and the Serbo-Croatian hour on Los Angeles-area radio.

WSJ: Five Decades of Arhoolie Records | By Barry Mazor